Meaningful Use Requirements

Is Your Rural Healthcare Organization or Critical Access Hospital Eligible for Meaningful Use?

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs), there are a total of 24 meaningful use objectives.

To qualify for an incentive payment, 19 of these 24 objectives must be met, including:

  • 14 required core objectives
  • 5 menu set objectives that may be chosen from a list of 10

Eligible Hospital and CAH Core Objectives

  1. Use CPOE for medication orders directly entered by any licensed healthcare professional who can enter orders into the medical record per State, local, and professional guidelines.
  2. Implement drug-drug and drug-allergy interaction checks.
  3. Maintain an up-to-date problem list of current and active diagnoses.
  4. Maintain active medication list.
  5. Maintain active medication allergy list.
  6. Record all of the following demographics:
    • Preferred language
    • Gender
    • Race
    • Ethnicity
    • Date of birth
    • Date and preliminary cause of death in the event of mortality in the eligible hospital or CAH
  7. Record and chart changes in the following vital signs:
    • Height
    • Weight
    • Blood pressure
    • Calculate and display body mass index (BMI)
    • Plot and display growth charts for children 2–20 years, including BMI
  8. Record smoking for patients 13 years old or older.
  9. Report hospital clinical quality measures to CMS or, in the case of Medicaid eligible hospitals, the States.
  10. Implement one clinical decision support rule related to a high priority hospital condition along with the ability to track compliance with that rule.
  11. Provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information (including diagnostic test results, problem list, medication lists, medication allergies, discharge summary, procedures), upon request.
  12. Provide patients with an electronic copy of their discharge instructions at time of discharge, upon request.
  13. Capability to exchange key clinical information (for example, problem list, medication list, medication allergies, and diagnostic test results), among providers of care and patient authorized entities electronically.
  14. Protect electronic health information created or maintained by the certified EHR technology through the implementation of appropriate technical capabilities.

Eligible Hospital and CAH Menu Set Objectives

  1. Implement drug formulary checks.
  2. Record advance directives for patient 65 years old or older.
  3. Incorporate clinical lab-test results into EHR as structured data.
  4. Generate lists of patients by specific conditions to use for quality improvement, reduction of disparities, research, or outreach.
  5. Use certified EHR technology to identify patient-specific education resources and provide those resources to the patient if appropriate.
  6. The eligible hospital or CAH who receives a patient from another setting of care or provider of care or believes an encounter is relevant should perform medication reconciliation.
  7. The eligible hospital or CAH that transitions their patient to another setting of care or provider of care or refers their patient to another provider of care should provide summary care record for each transition of care or referral.
  8. Capability to submit electronic data to immunization registries or immunization information systems and actual submission according to applicable law and practice.
  9. Capability to submit electronic data on reportable (as required by State or local law) lab results to public health agencies and actual submission according to applicable law and practice.
  10. Capability to submit electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies and actual submission according to applicable law and practice.

Let Apex help you prepare for Meaningful Use.

Contact us today.